A few days ago, the CPL (that’s Cyberathlete Professional League for those of you who don’t recall every acronym you’ve heard) announced that it will shut down effective immediately. This makes it the second recent gaming league to shut down, as the World Series of Video Games closed its doors last September.
Headquartered in Dallas, TX, CPL has been running since June 1997 and as of last year has given out more than $4 million in prizes at their various competitive gaming competitions. All tournaments scheduled for this year are also canceled. If you happened to win a CPL event before the shutdown of operations — such as that $1 million Halo tourney — you’ll still be paid, so no worries there. (Maybe.)
According to the CPL, the reasons for shutting down are "…the current fragmentation of the sport, a crowded field of competing leagues, and the current economic climate." For those of you not familiar with the CPL or e-drama in general, it’s interesting to note that late 2007 several of the top professional gaming teams and groups (such as G7) announced a boycott of future CPL events due to the CPL’s inability to pay prize money to winners dating back to 2003.
The CPL’s spokespeople have yet to respond on whether or not that had anything to do with the sudden shutdown, but several posts asking that question in the official CPL news thread were deleted, and the warning was posted "We will also not allow posts about unfounded rumors, flights of fantasy, conspiracy theories, run-of-the-mill garbage and/or allow links to websites with other assorted fabrications."
In other words, since I mentioned that they were being boycott by several top teams and organizations due to inability to pay, don’t expect to see a link here on their site anytime soon.
